Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them. They are poor. They are driven. And they are girls.
When Poornima was just a toddler, she was about to fall into a river. Her mother, beside herself, screamed at her father to grab her. But he hesitated: 'I was standing there, and I was thinking . . . She's just a girl. Let her go . . . That's the thing with girls, isn't it . . . You think, Push. That's all it would take. Just one little push.'
After her mother's death, Poornima has very little kindness in her life. She is left to take care of her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. So when Savitha enters their household, Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to secure for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle.

Shobha Rao moved from India to the USA at the age of seven. She won the 2014 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and is the recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation fellowship. Her work has be...(+)